Once Josh was pretty sure he’d exhausted her by going through his stack of flash cards three times, he sat back and closed his eyes. “Thanks, Morgan. I think I’ve got it. Is there anything I can help you with? Memorization, tax conundrums, shoulder massage?”
“Well, I’ll never refuse a shoulder massage.” She twisted around on the couch and moved her long hair to the side. “I fell asleep here and kinked my neck funny on the pillow.”
Josh looked at the skin of her neck where it met the soft cotton of her sweater and hesitated a moment before reaching for it. It felt so intimate to be sitting near her warmth that he had to pause and make sure he wasn’t crossing some line. A memory of her kiss in the kitchen a couple of weeks ago slammed him, making his heart rate speed up, and it sped even more when he recalled the beach. They hadn’t been this physically close for a long time, since the camera shoot didn’t count.
He’d been doing everything he could to put those growing feelings of closeness aside—maybe needlessly. She had given him that kitchen kiss as a congratulatory token only. The beach kissing was for the same reason, just a celebration that got carried a little too far. He’d done that kind of thing at beach bonfires a lot in the past, so it didn’t count. And now he was giving her a thanks for helping me with my Politics of Developing Countries flash cards back rub, not a hey, let’s get closer, baby back rub.
Josh pushed a stray lock of her hair to the side. This would be fine. No problem. He wouldn’t even think about how his hand felt against her skin when she slid the neckline of her sweater to the side so he could get to where the muscle was tight, and he’d completely suppress the urge to put his face closer to smell the honeysuckle of her hair. None of that—he wouldn’t think of any of it.
“Mmm. That is exactly—” Morgan exhaled. “You’re very good at this.”
“I’m a man of many skills.”
“Now, that I believe.” Morgan relaxed against the sofa, and Josh kept working on the knot in her shoulder until he could feel it go loose. “That’s so much better. Don’t tell me that while you were out of college for a couple of years you were busy at massage therapy school.”
“Just a natural.”
“Mmm.” She hummed again, and Josh felt that hum go buzzing through him so strongly he realized he’d better let go now. He gave her shoulders one last press, and then he patted them and pulled her hair back into place. Morgan leaned backward, across his lap. “I haven’t been this happy since…since I gave back my roller skates. Thanks for forcing me to do that, by the way. You’re so wise. Mmmm. Can I just rest here a minute? I’ve been up so late so many nights…” She looked so peaceful.
“Sure,” Josh whispered, adjusting a little so his feet were on the coffee table and his head rested against the cushions. “We’ll just take a quick power nap and then get back to studying.”
He closed his eyes, his whole torso warm with the radiant heat of Morgan on his lap, her chest rising and falling. Soon his own breathing matched hers, and he placed a hand on her stomach and dozed. Just a power nap. Twenty minutes.
Six hours later, the clock on the mantel above the fireplace chimed what seemed an endless number of times, and Josh’s stomach growled, the combo rousing him from a very nice dream about Morgan laughing at every joke he told. He opened an eye to peer around and figure out where he was. The couch. Eleven p.m. Whoa. That was some power nap. He tried to sit up, but soon he realized he was all tangled up beside Morgan, her waves of hair on his same pillow, her head nestled against his chest, his arm around her shoulders. She’d curled up against him and looked so peaceful there, he hated to disturb her, but this was definitely not part of the definition of keeping a safe distance. All along he’d known that never consummating the marriage was sufficient cause for an annulment, and the lynchpin of their plan for obtaining one without any hitch. He could just hear the pointed questions at the annulment board Did you sleep together? Well, yes and no…
No. They hadn’t. And Morgan was not that kind of girl. She’d probably freak out if she woke up and found that she’d even accidentally slept beside him for these few hours, so he had to do what he could to allay that.
“Morgan?” He rubbed her shoulder gently. “We should get back to the books. Can I bring you a drink or something?”
She gulped and nestled up against him again, like she was in a pretty dream and didn’t want to leave.
“Morgan? It’s late.”
“Oh, Josh.” She woke a little more and then opened her eyes and leaned up and kissed him softly. Josh’s insides exploded like the Fourth of July. “I can’t thank you enough for helping my shoulder kink. You’re wonderful.” This last word was more of a sigh than a word, and it sent an electric current through him at least as potent as her kiss.
“Morgan, I—” But she’d drifted again. I think we’d better be a lot more cautious.
∞∞∞
Morgan fought her way out of the grogginess of the dark tunnel of sleep she’d been in for what felt like a million hours, the most recent dream of which she’d been kissing Josh until he looked like he’d never leave her. That was a happy dream of wishful thinking because that wasn’t how things worked between men and women, but she wouldn’t mind revisiting it again soon. Finally she could open an eye, and she didn’t recognize where she was for a minute. Oh, yeah. The library. She was cold right now, without a blanket, but she hadn’t noticed it in the night. Weird. She always noticed if she was cold in the night.
Wait a minute. She’d been warm for a reason.
“Hey, Morgan? You awake?” Josh’s voice came from somewhere else in a hush, like he almost didn’t want to wake her, but knew it was time. A glance at the clock—after six—told her it was. Oh, man. She had been asleep forever—nearly twelve hours! “Do you want to sample some of my gourmet cooking skills?”
Morgan sat up, straightening her sweater which had gotten all bunched up on her stomach, and saw that Josh was setting a bowl of Cheerios on the coffee table in front of her. He’d paid attention to what she liked for breakfast. Wow.
“Thanks. I love Cheerios.”
“I know.” Josh sat beside her with his own bowl of some kind of flake cereal. “It’s the least I can do for all you helped me with last night.”
“Uh—” Morgan had a vague memory of flash cards and a back rub, but a vivid memory of the kissing-Josh dream. Part of her couldn’t recall what was real and what was sleep. “What all did I help you with, exactly?” She gulped a bite of cereal, but it stuck in her throat. She should not be sleeping by a man she wasn’t married to.
Even though she was married to him.
My life is so warped.
“You know. Studying. Stuff.”
“Stuff.” Did she really kiss him? She didn’t know. Was that the stuff?
“Uh, yeah. Stuff.”
That answered her question, as did a dawning awareness of what had happened. She did kiss him, just once, and it wasn’t really intentional—or at least it wasn’t planned. It just… happened. And she’d liked it, and then she’d sunk back into dreaming of more of it. Her face was blazing red, and to cool it she took another quick bite of cereal with cold milk.
They had better be more careful. She knew she was falling for Josh, but she couldn’t let herself get so comfortable with him that she ruined things for both of them—or that she let herself get tremendously, irreparably hurt.
“About that…” Morgan looked up at him with all the apology her face could muster.
“Don’t worry. I’m human. We’re human. We get sleepy and our guard goes down. Say, you wanna go pick up some coffee before your test?”
“Sure. But Josh? I’d better not get sleepy anymore.”
∞∞∞
Josh dropped Morgan off at her test and then walked to his own building across campus. Nine thousand facts dive-bombed his mind, and only a few of them had to do with African dictators. He’d just spent the night with Morgan in his arms, and when she woke up, the only thing
she’d said was that it had better never happen again.
At that statement, two competing halves of him went to war. True, said the logical half of him, but the other more egotistical side of him shouted that she ought to want to wake up beside him every morning because he was so worth having. Shah! A girl like Morgan could have anyone she cast a glance at. She wouldn’t waste her time on him.
He yanked the door to the political science building open, nearly whacking an oblivious student engrossed in his headphones. “Sorry, dude.” But dude didn’t hear him, and Josh went back to eating his heart out.
Morgan had felt so amazing curled up next to him it was almost like a religious experience. He’d definitely glimpsed heaven, or at least a sleeping angel.
So when she said she’d better not get sleepy again—in essence that she’d better never repeat that divine moment for him—it kicked out all his pride, leaving him a heaving mess inside.
She didn’t want him. And he shouldn’t want her.
Those two mantras surfaced and resounded, taking over his entire brain for the duration of the test on Mugabe and Zimbabwe. Josh completely bombed it. All he could do was chew the yellow paint on the side of his pencil and remember how that honeysuckle smelled and how she said she never wanted him to smell it again.
Josh was going to have to make some kind of drastic change, or his ego was going to take more than a simple bruising. It was going to die.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It was morning, and Morgan got up early. “Josh?” She wanted to know how his political history test went, whether she’d ruined it for him by not letting him get a good night’s rest. She’d hate herself a little for that, but she wouldn’t have traded that feeling of waking up beside him for anything.
“Josh?” He’d had work after class, so she didn’t see him last night. “Josh?” If he was still asleep she hated to wake him, but when she peeked in his room, she saw he hadn’t slept in his bed. A sick worry formed in her stomach. She’d known it was a risk, even if it was partly a sleepy accident to kiss him and lazily fail to leave his side all night, but she didn’t think it would make him abandon her.
She tried to not worry as she went to class. She’d have to focus, as it was. Finals were coming up soon, and she couldn’t blow them—not after all the machinations she’d gone through to get this far in the semester. For the next few hours she’d put Josh Hyatt out of her mind, like he’d obviously done with Morgan.
Why didn’t he at least text and tell her he was all right?
Ugh. It wasn’t like she owned him. It wasn’t like they were really married and he owed her that courtesy. Business partners didn’t owe it to each other to tell where they were every waking or sleeping minute. A dark cloud settled over Morgan’s mood, and the second hand of the clock on the wall in her Cost Accounting class slowed to a crawl. Was that real or perception? Was it because her mind had sped up so much with thoughts of self-doubt bombarding her so fast that she was in some kind of hyper-time? The biggest doubt attacked when she remembered Josh’s description of Brielle: she was a woman on fire, ready to take on the world, organized, driven, exciting.
Morgan saw herself as anything but exciting. She was an accountant, for heaven’s sake. Wait, not even that. She was a student aiming to become an accountant. When in the history of Earth had an accountant set the world on fire—in any manner? Never, that’s when. Morgan had no interest in setting the world ablaze. It wasn’t her way. She could barely talk to people, let alone inspire or incite a group to action of any kind. Her ambitions were so much more domestic, and the older she got, the more so they became, especially as she discovered cooking from the never-ending refrigerator. Contrasting herself to Josh’s globe-trotting girlfriend with a short skirt and a long jacket who was out taking charge of every situation and slashing and burning her way through life’s mundanity, Morgan looked like boredom with boobs.
Maybe pop culture said blondes had more fun, but Morgan was living proof of the opposite. Not that she knew what color Brielle’s hair was. Maybe the girlfriend was blonde, too, and maybe Josh had picked Morgan for his scheme because she reminded him of Brielle and could keep him warm while the real girl was gone.
Morgan rolled her eyes at this self-immolation. Frankly, it wasn’t necessary. She and Josh were friends, friends with some chemistry, but in the dreams after that kiss, she’d let her mind roll farther and illustrate a future for them, even though it couldn’t happen. He didn’t suddenly owe her any more attention or devotion just because she threw herself at him at the beach and in the kitchen with the waffles or made herself too available to kiss on the couch.
Oh, but that couch kiss warmed her, even the memory of it.
Her heart wrenched. Josh was the one guy she’d really wanted. Maybe ever. And he was hers—and not hers.
“Ms. Hyatt? Did you do the calculation?” It sounded like the professor was asking her for the second time, and she had been in a Josh spin cycle in her brain.
“I’m sorry, sir. Which problem?”
“Number sixteen.”
Right. Sixteen. She looked down at her homework and finally responded, luckily with the right answer or she would have been embarrassed. As it was, everyone in class was looking at her, and she felt the weight of their stares.
Isabel caught up with her after class. “Tough homework, huh? You spend the whole weekend doing it?”
The question sent Morgan reviewing the roller coaster of events of the weekend. “Uh, yeah.”
“You okay? You seemed a little…absent today.” Isabel kept pace with Morgan as they crossed the Quad. “The luscious Josh Hyatt still treating you right? Because if you ever get tired of him, chuck him my direction.”
“Uh, that’s my husband you’re talking about.” Morgan rolled her eyes at her own hypocrisy, just as her phone started ringing Mom’s tone—croaking frogs. “Everything’s fine. But my mom’s calling. Gotta take it.”
As she picked up, though, Isabel inserted, “My boyfriend proposed to me on Thanksgiving. We’re planning a quick Valentine’s Day wedding so we can apply for the Seagram Scholarship.” She smiled and dodged away.
“Mom?” Morgan waved Isabel goodbye, giving her a thumbs-up as Isabel blissfully gave a wave of the sparkly new diamond on her left ring finger back at Morgan. “How’s Nixie? You guys have a good trip to see Aunt Jolene?”
“Oh, the dog’s fine. And I got a lot of poetry done. Vancouver Island always inspires me.”
Great. More sand, more frogs. Morgan rolled her eyes and wished again there’d never been any poetry to begin with. Or frogs. She hated frogs.
“But the reason I’m calling is not about me. It’s about you!”
“Really.” Morgan didn’t know how to respond to this. Mom was a good mom, but she was pretty self-absorbed a lot of the time. “I’m doing just fine. Getting ready for finals.”
“Oh, good. How’s Josher?”
Uh, lost? Gone forever? Never telling her where he was again? Morgan didn’t know what to say. “He’s doing great. We went to dinner with his family a few weeks ago. It was interesting.”
“Oh, wonderful. I hope they were nice to you.”
They weren’t, but Josh kept her safe until they thawed. “I took your rice recipe. They thought it was amazing.”
“The one with the caramelized onions? Everyone loves that. I haven’t made it in years.” Mom went on a nostalgia tangent for a few minutes until Morgan was nearly late for her next class. She stood at the door wishing Josh had called instead of Mom right now so she could breathe again. Just knowing whether or not she’d ruined everything would help unkink her neck.
“My class is about to start, so I’d better go.”
“No, darling. I haven’t even told you the news. It’s so exciting I don’t know how I didn’t lead with it.” Uh-huh. That would have been nice, as now the professor was setting her book on the dais and students were opening their laptops to take notes on her lecture. Morgan shifted her weight,
impatient for the news. “I’ve got it all planned. It’s late, of course, by several months, but it took me this long to get things all set, and the soonest I could book The Victorian was May twenty-fifth, two weeks after your graduation, which I thought you’d definitely like to have over with before you launched into wedding reception hoopla anyway. I mean, the final touches of flowers and catering and bunting and guest lists will all be taken care of by then, but you’ll want to have a dress fitting and things at the weight you are then—let’s hope your dress from your actual wedding still fits. You did have a dress, didn’t you? You’re not going to be with child by then are you? Because it really won’t fit then.”
With child! “No, Mom.”
“No, what? No, you won’t be preg-o, or no you didn’t have a dress?” She burst into a Mom-belly-laugh at that point, and Morgan tried again to sign off, to no avail. “Sorry, hon. I’m just so excited about all the details, everything coming together. Several gifts have already started to arrive in the mail, actually. I’ve invited everyone. Everyone! All my college friends, all the people from church, your great aunts and uncles from Maine and Wisconsin. They’re all flying in, and I’ve got hotel space booked for them at the Red Lion, and it’s going to be the biggest party this family has ever seen. I can’t wait to see some of my long lost cousins. It’s going to be absolutely amazing. I hope you’re okay with lavender and green as your colors. I told The Victorian that’s what we wanted.”
Lavender and green. Morgan’s mind went into a blender. She had to go to class. She said thanks and hung up, her arm falling helpless at her side. What had just happened? Morgan wandered into class, still reeling from the Mack truck that had hit her. Class was halfway through when she realized the first wave of implications of the call: all her family was coming to celebrate her wedding—they’d booked flights and hotels—for the exact week when she and Josh would be signing the annulment proceedings. Her insides lurched.
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